Quintin Jardine's blog

This reference will take you to an article in today’s Scottish Review, written by its editor Kenneth Roy.

http://www.scottishreview.net/index.shtml?utm_source=Sign-Up.to&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=274089-Islay+McLeod%2C+a+case+of+assault%2C+and+Strathclyde+Police++

Mr Roy is one of my country’s most respected journalists, and he would not publish such a story lightly. It tells a shocking and intolerable tale of indifference,  incompetence, and outright neglect of duty by a public authority. Given that the body in question is Strathclyde police service, it’s a matter of even greater concern.

It is all the more significant, because Scotland stands on the edge of the merger of its eight police forces into one single body, a move driven by the Justice Secretary, Kenny McAskill, without any significant public consultation or debate, and in the face of the disapproval of many senior police officers. It has been my view since its foundation, thirty-something years ago, that Strathclyde police service is itself too big for effective supervision and control from the top, and the outrageous treatment of the lady at the centre of this story can only endorse that opinion. As Mr Roy notes, the favourite to be appointed as head of the new single Scottish police service is Stephen House, current chief constable of Strathclyde. I have no doubt that he is a very competent policeman, and an equally competent manager. But if he can’t keep a grip of what is happening in Ayrshire, how can he, or anyone else, be expected to ensure that the public in Lerwick, or Aberdeen, or Dundee or Fort William or Achnasheen, etc., can feel safe in their communities?

Answer that, Mr McAskill, please, before proceeding with a folly that could make all of us rest a little less easily in our beds.

Last word on the young Chinese swimmer . . . I hope.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19116749

Finally . . . ‘As Easy as Murder’ known in our house as Primavera 3, is out in paperback.

It’s available from now  www.campbellreadbooks.com at 25% off cover price; bargain buy. And of course, every copy is signed by QJ. A click of the link on this page will take you straight there.

Another August 6 anniversary; 67 years ago today the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. I have family in and from that city, so it’s not something I should let go by unobserved. It may have hastened the end of the war, but I’ve always believed that its use against a civilian population was a war crime.

One hundred years ago today, Margaret Weir Bell, known all her life as Gretta, was born in Bellshill, Scotland. Thirty-three years later, she gave birth to me. Eleven years ago, she passed away. RIP, Ma.

Not even I could make this up: from this morning’s Herald, courtesy of Doug Gillon:

‘The hopes of the defending champion and world No. 1, the USA’s LaShawn Merritt, fell flat, unhinged by a hamstring injury.

Merritt, who served a doping suspension for a drug contained in a penis enhancement cream, walked off after 200m.’

Speaking of being missed, someone who will be, by me at least, will be Ian Thorpe, who signed off from the BBC coverage at the conclusion of last night’s swimming session. All  the way through, the Thorpedo called it as he saw it, and if his co-presenters (usually Gary Lineker) said something crass or stupid, he was very quick to put them right, and inject some balance, reason and common sense into the situation. It’s probably past praying for, but the decision-makers at BBC could do a lot worse than keep him around for rest of the Games. As a multi-gold winner, he’d have a lot to contribute. I’m sure that Mr Lineker would not endorse my suggestion; in my eyes that makes it all the more valid.

What a night! I am certain that we’ll be hearing and seeing lots of Jessica and Mo for years to come. I fear we’ll hear less of Greg Rutherford, who also had the night of his life. I hope I’m wrong, because of the three, he was the one who exceeded expectations, and also because he did what was, and will remain, easily the best reaction interview of the Games. If you haven’t seen it, seek it out on the iPlayer. A display of honest, outright happiness with not a tear in sight; not to be missed.

I like Clare Balding. Usually she is a breath of fresh air on the public telly, when she’s dealing with subjects with which she’s familiar, mostly involving horses. But having her front poolside presentation of the Olympic swimming was a major mistake. Day one, she kicked off the Ye Shiwen controversy before the poor kid had time to dry off. Having got over that, just, she shot herself in the other foot last night by appearing to suggest that the brave Becky Adlington’s bronze medal had let swimmer and nation down. At the first opportunity, she was forced to apologise, abjectly on air, along with her co-presenter, Mark Foster, who had been drawn into it. Shame; I hope the damage to her BBC career isn’t permanent.

You’ve read all of me and all of Ian Rankin, and you’d like recommendations? Okay. If you like historical works, try Michael Jecks. Contemporary, (or occasionally post-apocalyptic), you might look at Paul Johnston, a fellow Scot. Then there’s Michael Dobbs, who turns out excellent thrillers when he’s not busy being a Lord. Val McDermid never fails, nor does Alex Gray. Finally, Linwood Barclay is on top of his game right now. Enough to be going on with?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9449473/Lib-Dems-threaten-consequences-as-Tories-block-Lords-reform.html

I’m not a big fan of compromise government, never have been. When it results in a party with  57 Commons seats out of 650 trying to force through a piece of ill-considered electoral reform that has already been clearly rejected, I become a big opponent.

If the Lib Dems feel as strongly about the issue as they claim, they should withdraw from the coalition. Or maybe Dave should; minority government  can work.

A friend of mine, an eminent figure in the financial services industry, made an interesting point in discussion yesterday. If he’s right, and invariably, he is, now might be the time to consider your bank shareholdings. Potentially, the rate-fixing scandal could open the door to enormously costly litigation by those who may have suffered losses as a result. If that happens and goes all the way, lawyers will be the winners and ultimately, bank shareholders will be the losers.

A welcome bonus from the Olympics; Denise Lewis on the telly. Lovely lady, class act.

RIP Maeve Binchy, a great story teller who’ll be missed by many.

I hesitate to offer advice to the Governor, but this is not the way to maintain good media relations.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/mitt-romney/9441636/Mitt-Romney-aide-in-new-kiss-my-ass-gaffe.html

It’s the first of August, and I have a date. An old flame is coming back into my life.

Those of you watching BBC telly in the last couple of days may have seen a rather lurid Eastenders trailer, announcing the return to the soap of one of its old stagers, Sharon Watts. A tornado is about to hit Walford, it would seem. Trust me, that will be nothing compared with the effect of my annual reunions with Primavera Eagle Blackstone, née Phillips. I’ve never known a woman who can get deeper inside my head. She dominates my existence for every waking moment of each visit, and then buggers off leaving me to keep up the mess. Recently she’s had this fixation that Oz, her ex and the father of her fast-growing son Tom, isn’t really dead. Nonsense, of course, but she won’t let it go. She’s still in St Marti, while I’m stuck in Gullane, but that’s no hindrance to her. She’s on Facetime even now demanding attention. Got to go.

Is there a whiff of racism in the air over Olympic Park? When the 16-year-old Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen, knocked lumps off her personal best to win a gold medal, she was barely out of the water before the BBC presenter Clare Balding announced that questions would be asked. Inevitably, they were. The kid was accused of doping, indirectly, by an American coach and has been forced to protest her innocence.

Last night a 16-year-old Lithuanian girl, Ruta Meilutyte, knocked lumps off her personal best to win a gold in the same pool. She became a folk hero instantly, without a whisper of suspicion, and quite rightly so.  Ruta happens to live in England and attends the same school as the golden boy diver Tom Daley.

In the same session, a 17-year-old American, Missy Franklin, swam a semi-final (successfully), then, less than half an hour later, went back into the pool and won a gold, a remarkable achievement that has received nothing but the acclaim and praise it deserves.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

I’m not normally a vindictive guy, (I hope) but I take more than a little pleasure from a report in this morning’s press. It claims that the Serious Fraud Office is taking a keen interest in bankers who are accused of rigging the London inter-bank overnight  rate, and that it believes that they could be prosecuted under existing UK legislation. Several unnamed institutions are under investigation, and it’s a good bet that these include Barclays, the bank over whom the storm broke, and RBS. If the SFO taks it all the way, some of the people involved in the scheme/scam could be looking at a few years as guests of the Mountbatten-Windsor hotel group.

If it takes such draconian action to restore morality to the banking industry as a whole then so be it, for it is surely lacking. I heard a radio ad the other day, for Nationwide, in which it promises to keep customers informed of changes in the variable interest rates on their savings, and trumpets this as a virtue. Excuse me? That should be a legal requirement, and in very large letters. A couple of years ago, my wife opened an internet savings account with Barclays. The interest rate was reasonable, but only for the first year. There was a clause hidden away in the small print that she didn’t notice; as a result her money has been earning interest at 0.01%, a rate that goes way beyond miserly and well into the Shylock zone. This from the bank that has just allowed its chief operating officer, the man at the heart of the Libor scandal, to walk away with a pay-off of £8.75m. (Hopefully he has left a contact address with the SFO.)

Thanks for those tips.I’d love to join you in a glass of Erath Hills pinot noir, (or pinot gris for that matter) but Oregon wines are hard to find where I live.

Okay, I haven’t been active on the blog for the last month or so; if apologies are due, you have them. There have been several reasons for my absence; most of  them were family-related, but also I’d become just plain bored by the main issues of the day. I was tired of the constant wrangling between the partners in our so-called Westminster coalition, an enterprise that was doomed to mediocrity from day one, since the Lib Dems can’t stand the Tories, the Tories all hate Vince C able, and nobody really knows who Nick Clegg is. I didn’t care who won the French election . . . although the French people will soon be caring a great deal, I reckon. I didn’t care whether Greece left the euro, even though the only solid reason I can see for it staying in is that in supporting it Germany is weakening itself, and making it less able to dominate the rest of mainland Europe. I did and still do care about the under-capitalised Spanish banks and the toxicity they piled upon themselves by handing out 110% mortgages more or less for the asking, but there’s nothing I can do about them, other than take advantage of the improving £/€  exchange rate. I had passed my boredom threshold  with the slow lingering death of  Rangers Football Club. (It really is dead, you know. Yes, I know ten guys in blue shirts and a goalie struggled past Brechin City yesterday, but they are in no way the lineal descendants of Alan Morton, Corky Young, Bob McPhail, Jerry Dawson, Jim Baxter, et al. I’m sorry, Ally; you are a lion, but you’re working for donkeys, and  the former temple which is still your home has become a mausoleum.)

So what’s prompted me to come back? Disgust, mainly. We’re three days into the Olympics and our cancerous media seem hell bent on digging up as many knocking stories as they can manufacture. For example, last night after the England/Wales select football match at Wembley, well won by the home team,  Sky Sports News stationed a reporter and crew outside studying the time it took to leave the stadium. Yes, it takes a while to clear 90,000 punters from any venue of that size, but so what? Fact was, Sky’s ace reporter couldn’t find a single punter who was prepared to complain about it on camera. The next non-story was the loss of a set of keys to some secure areas of Wembley. Yes, it happened: last week. There was never a security risk, and all the locks have been changed, yet Sky described it as an ’embarrassing incident’. Go back three days to the first England/Wales select match. What did the Online Daily Mail (where the real pond life can be found) choose to highlight? Ryan Giggs wasn’t seen to be singing the national anthem; somehow this was transformed into and reported as a deliberate snub by all the Welsh players in the squad.

I began my working life as a journalist. I worked alongside some great reporters, all of whom had two things in common; their integrity, and the fact that they knew a genuine news story from a pile of shite. There don’t seem to be any of them left.